CHANDIGARH/ LUDHIANA : In a major push to ensure prompt action and mitigate public inconvenience during monsoon season, Punjab Local Government Minister S. Harjot Singh Bains said that Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana has set up ‘Monsoon War Room’- a tech-enabled control centre monitoring the city 24×7 through 1,700 CCTV cameras.
While inspecting the facility set up at Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) in MC Zone D, Sarabha Nagar, on Thursday, S. Harjot Singh Bains said the war room streams live HD footage from flood-prone intersections, low-lying colonies and vulnerable drains onto video walls. He said that the system would identify inundation within seconds and helps map flood spread, enabling teams to be deployed to exact locations, cutting response time from hours to minutes.
After reviewing the real-time analytics, the Local Government Minister said that a dedicated monsoon helpline number will also be launched soon. Citizens can call PN the helpline to report water-logging, blocked drains or overflowing nullahs and the complaint will be logged at the war room instantly.
Each complaint will be geo-tagged on the city map, assigned to the nearest field team and tracked until resolved. The goal is to fix issues at the earliest and let people see the action in real time, he added.
During a subsequent review meeting with MC officials, S. Harjot Singh Bains laid out an action plan to prevent monsoon-related civic failures. He directed round-the-clock monitoring, desilting of Buddha Dariya and main sewer lines, covering of all manholes to prevent accidents, cleaning of road gullies and urgent patchwork on damaged roads.
“Under Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann’s leadership, we are leaving no stone unturned. ‘Mission Clean Punjab’ is an operational order, not a slogan,” S. Bains said. He warned that officials found negligent in desilting or emergency response will face strict action. Negligence will not be tolerated.
The meeting was attended by Mayor Principal Inderjit Kaur, MC Commissioner Ojasvi Alankar, Senior Deputy Mayor Rakesh Prashar, Deputy Mayor Prince Johar, Joint Commissioner Tapan Bhanot and Assistant Commissioner Jasdev Sekhon. MC Commissioner Ojasvi Alankar apprised the Local Govt Minister on the command centre’s operational readiness and said civic body teams are on high alert.
